“Ideological and artistic originality of Comedy D. Essay on the topic Ideological and artistic originality of Comedy D

The role of Fonvizin as an artist-playwright and author of satirical essays in the development of Russian literature is enormous, as well as the fruitful influence he had on many Russian writers not only of the 18th century, but also of the first half of the 19th century centuries. Not only the political progressiveness of Fonvizin’s work, but also his artistic progressiveness determined the deep respect and interest in him that Pushkin quite clearly showed.

Elements of realism arose in Russian literature of the 1770-1790s simultaneously in different areas and in different ways. This was the main trend in the development of the Russian aesthetic worldview of that time, which prepared - at the first stage - for its future Pushkin stage. But Fonvizin did more in this direction than others, not to mention Radishchev, who came after him and not without dependence on his creative discoveries, because it was Fonvizin who first raised the question of realism as a principle, as a system of understanding man and society.

On the other hand, realistic moments in Fonvizin’s work were most often limited to his satirical task. It was precisely the negative phenomena of reality that he was able to understand in a realistic sense, and this narrowed not only the scope of the topics he embodied in the new manner he discovered, but also narrowed the very principles of his formulation of the question. Fonvizin is included in this regard in the tradition of the “satirical trend,” as Belinsky called it, which constitutes a characteristic phenomenon of Russian literature XVIII centuries. This trend is unique and, almost earlier than it could be in the West, prepared the formation of the style critical realism. In itself, it grew in the depths of Russian classicism; it was associated with the specific forms that classicism acquired in Russia; it ultimately exploded the principles of classicism, but its origins from it are obvious.

Fonvizin grew up as a writer in literary environment Russian noble classicism of the 1760s, in the school of Sumarokov and Kheraskov. Throughout his life, his artistic thinking retained a clear imprint of the influence of this school. The rationalistic understanding of the world, characteristic of classicism, is strongly reflected in Fonvizin’s work. And for him, a person is most often not so much a specific individual as a unit in a social classification, and for him, a political dreamer, the social, the state can completely absorb the personal in the image of a person. The high pathos of social duty, subordinating in the writer’s mind the interests of the “too human” in a person, forced Fonvizin to see in his hero a pattern of civic virtues and vices; because he, like other classics, understood the state itself and the very duty to the state not historically, but mechanistically, to the extent of the metaphysical limitations of the Enlightenment worldview of the 18th century in general. Hence, Fonvizin was characterized by the great advantages of the classicism of his century: clarity, precision of the analysis of man as a general social concept, and the scientific nature of this analysis is at the level of scientific achievements of his time, and social principle assessments of human actions and moral categories. But Fonvizin also had the inevitable shortcomings of classicism: the schematism of abstract classifications of people and moral categories, the mechanistic idea of a person as a conglomerate of abstractly conceivable “abilities,” the mechanistic and abstract nature of the very idea of the state as the norm of social existence.

In Fonvizin, many characters are constructed not according to the law of individual character, but according to a pre-given and limited scheme of moral and social norms. We see the quarrel, and only the quarrel of the Advisor; Gallomaniac Ivanushka - and the entire composition of his role is built on one or two notes; martinet Brigadier, but, apart from martinet, there is little in him characteristic features. This is the method of classicism - to show not living people, but individual vices or feelings, to show not everyday life, but a diagram of social relationships. Characters in comedies and satirical essays by Fonvizin are schematized. The very tradition of calling them “meaningful” names grows on the basis of a method that reduces the content of a character’s characteristics primarily to the very trait that is fixed by his name. The bribe-taker Vzyatkin, the fool Slaboumov, the “khalda” Khaldina, the tomboy Sorvantsov, the truth-lover Pravdin, etc. appear. At the same time, the artist’s task includes not so much the depiction of individual people, but the depiction of social relations, and this task could and was performed brilliantly by Fonvizin. Social relations, understood as applied to the ideal norm of the state, determined the content of a person only by the criteria of this norm. The subjectively noble character of the norm of state life, built by the Sumarokov-Panin school, also determined a feature characteristic of Russian classicism: it organically divides all people into nobles and “others.” The characteristics of the nobles include signs of their abilities, moral inclinations, feelings, etc. - Pravdin or Skotinin, Milon or Prostakov, Dobrolyubov or Durykin; the same is the differentiation of their characteristics in the text of the corresponding works. On the contrary, “others”, “ignoble” are characterized primarily by their profession, class, place in the social system - Kuteikin, Tsyfirkin, Tsezurkin, etc. Nobles for this system of thought are still people par excellence; or – according to Fonvizin – vice versa: the best people must be nobles, and the Durykins are nobles only in name; the rest act as carriers of the general features of their social affiliation, assessed positively or negatively depending on the relationship of the given social category to the political concept of Fonvizin, or Sumarokov, Kheraskov, etc.

It is typical for a classicist writer to have the same attitude towards tradition, towards established mask roles literary work, to familiar and constantly repeating stylistic formulas, representing the established collective experience of humanity (characteristic here is the author’s anti-individualistic attitude towards creative process). And Fonvizin freely operates with such ready-made formulas and masks given to him by ready-made tradition. Dobrolyubov in “The Brigadier” repeats Sumarokov’s ideal lovers’ comedies. The Clerical Advisor came to Fonvizin from the satirical articles and comedies of the same Sumarokov, just as the petimeter-Counselor had already appeared in plays and articles before Fonvizin’s comedy. Fonvizin, within the limits of his classical method, does not look for new individual themes. The world seems to him to have long been dissected, decomposed into typical features, society as a classified “mind” that has predetermined assessments and frozen configurations of “abilities” and social masks. The genres themselves are established, prescribed by rules and demonstrated by examples. A satirical article, a comedy, a solemn speech of praise in a high style (Fonvizin’s “Word for Pavel’s recovery”), etc. - everything is unshakable and does not require the author’s invention; his task in this direction is to inform Russian literature best achievements world literature; this task of enriching Russian culture was solved all the more successfully by Fonvizin, since he understood and felt specific features Russian culture itself, which refracted in its own way what came from the West.

Seeing a person not as an individual, but as a unit of the social or moral scheme of society, Fonvizin, in his classical manner, is antipsychological in the individual sense. He writes an obituary biography of his teacher and friend Nikita Panin; this article contains a hot political thought, a rise in political pathos; It also contains the hero’s track record, and there is also his civil glorification; but there is no person, personality, environment, and, in the end, no biography in it. This is a “life”, a diagram ideal life, not a saint, of course, but a political figure, as Fonvizin understood him. Fonvizin’s anti-psychological manner is even more noticeable in his memoirs. They are called “A sincere confession of my deeds and thoughts,” but there is almost no disclosure of inner life in these memoirs. Meanwhile, Fonvizin himself puts his memoirs in connection with Rousseau’s “Confession,” although he immediately characteristically contrasts his plan with the latter’s plan. In his memoirs, Fonvizin is a brilliant writer of everyday life and a satirist, first of all; individualistic self-revelation, brilliantly resolved by Rousseau's book, is alien to him. In his hands, the memoirs turn into a series of moralizing sketches, such as satirical letters-articles of journalism of the 1760-1780s. At the same time, they give a picture that is exceptional in its richness of witty details. social life in its negative manifestations, and this is their great merit. Fonvizin the classic's people are static. The Brigadier, the Advisor, Ivanushka, Julitta (in the early “Nedorosl”), etc. - they are all given from the very beginning and do not develop during the movement of the work. In the first act of "The Brigadier", in the exposition, the heroes themselves directly and unambiguously define all the features of their character schemes, and in the future we see only comic combinations and collisions of the same features, and these collisions do not affect the internal structure of each role. Then, characteristic of Fonvizin is the verbal definition of masks. The soldier's speech of the Brigadier, the clerical speech of the Adviser, the petimetric speech of Ivanushka, in essence, exhausts the description. After subtracting the speech characteristics, no other individual human traits remain. And they will all make jokes: fools and smart ones, evil and good will make jokes, because the heroes of “The Brigadier” are still heroes of a classical comedy, and everything in it should be funny and “intricate,” and Boileau himself demanded from the author of the comedy “that he the words were everywhere full of witticisms" (" Poetic art"). It was a strong, powerful system of artistic thinking, which gave a significant aesthetic effect in its specific forms and superbly realized not only in “The Brigadier”, but also in Fonvizin’s satirical articles.

Fonvizin remains a classic in the genre that flourished in a different, pre-romantic literary and ideological environment, in artistic memoirs. He adheres to the external canons of classicism in his comedies. They basically follow the rules of the school. Fonvizin most often has no interest in the plot side of the work.

In a number of Fonvizin’s works: in the early “Minor”, in “The Governor’s Choice” and in “The Brigadier”, in the story “Kalisthenes” the plot is only a frame, more or less conventional. “The Brigadier,” for example, is structured as a series of comic scenes, and above all a series of declarations of love: Ivanushka and the Advisor, the Advisor and the Brigadier, the Brigadier and the Advisor, and all these couples are contrasted not so much in the movement of the plot, but in the plane of schematic contrast, a pair of exemplary lovers: Dobrolyubov and Sophia. There is almost no action in the comedy; In terms of construction, “The Brigadier” is very reminiscent of Sumarokov’s farces with a gallery of comic characters.

However, even the most convinced, most zealous classicist in Russian noble literature, Sumarokov, it was difficult, perhaps even impossible, not to see at all and not to depict specific features of reality, to remain only in the world created by reason and the laws of abstract art. To leave this world was obligated, first of all, by dissatisfaction with the real, real world. For the Russian noble classicist, the concrete individual reality of social reality, so different from the ideal norm, is evil; it invades, as a deviation from this norm, the world of the rationalistic ideal; it cannot be framed in reasonable, abstract forms. But it exists, both Sumarokov and Fonvizin know this. Society lives an abnormal, “unreasonable” life. We have to reckon with this and fight against it. Positive phenomena in public life for both Sumarokov and Fonvizin they are normal and reasonable. Negative ones fall out of the scheme and appear in all their painful individuality for the classicist. Hence, in the satirical genres of Sumarokov in Russian classicism, the desire to show concretely real features of reality is born. Thus, in Russian classicism the reality of the concrete fact of life arose as satirical theme, with a sign of a certain, condemning author's attitude.

Fonvizin’s position on this issue is more complicated. The tension of the political struggle pushed him to take more radical steps in relation to the perception and depiction of reality, hostile to him, surrounding him on all sides, threatening his entire worldview. The struggle activated his vigilance for life. He raises the question of the social activity of a citizen writer, of an impact on life that is more acute than noble writers could do before him. “At the court of a king, whose autocracy is not limited by anything... can the truth be freely expressed? “- writes Fonvizin in the story “Kalisthenes”. And now his task is to explain the truth. A new ideal of a writer-fighter is emerging, very reminiscent of the ideal of a leading figure in literature and journalism in the Western educational movement. Fonvizin draws closer to the bourgeois progressive thought of the West on the basis of his liberalism, rejection of tyranny and slavery, and the struggle for his social ideal.

Why is there almost no culture of eloquence in Russia, asks Fonvizin in “Friend” honest people” and answers that this does not come “from a lack of national talent, which is capable of everything great, lower from the lack of the Russian language, the richness and beauty of which is convenient for any expression,” but from the lack of freedom, the lack of public life, the exclusion of citizens from participating in political life of the country. Art and political activity are closely related to each other. For Fonvizin, the writer is “a guardian of the common good,” “a useful adviser to the sovereign, and sometimes the savior of his fellow citizens and the fatherland.”

In the early 1760s, in his youth, Fonvizin was fascinated by the ideas of bourgeois radical thinkers in France. In 1764, he remade Gresset’s “Sidney” into Russian, not quite a comedy, but not a tragedy either, a play similar in type to the psychological dramas of bourgeois literature of the 18th century. in France. In 1769, an English story, “Sidney and Scilly or Beneficence and Gratitude,” translated by Fonvizin from Arno, was published. This - sentimental piece, virtuous, sublime, but built on new principles individual analysis. Fonvizin is looking for rapprochement with the bourgeoisie French literature. The fight against reaction pushes him onto the path of interest in advanced Western thought. And in his literary work, Fonvizin could not be only a follower of classicism.

The poster itself explains the characters.
P. A. Vyazemsky about the comedy “Minor”

Truly social comedy.
N. V. Gogop about the comedy “The Minor”

The first appearance of the comedy "Minor" on theater stage in 1872, according to the recollections of contemporaries, it caused “throwing of wallets” - the audience threw wallets filled with ducats onto the stage, such was their admiration for what they saw.

Before D.I. Fonvizin, the public knew almost no Russian comedy. In the first public theater, organized by Peter I, Moliere's plays were staged, and the emergence of Russian comedy is associated with the name of A.P. Sumarokov. “The property of comedy is to rule the temper with mockery” - Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin embodied these words of A.P. Sumarokov in his plays.

What caused such a strong reaction from the viewer? The liveliness of the characters, especially the negative ones, their figurative speech, the author's humor, so close to the folk one, the theme of the play is a satire on the principles of life and education of the sons of landowners, denunciation of serfdom.

Fonvizin departs from one of the golden rules of classical comedy: while observing the unity of place and time, he omits the unity of action. There is virtually no plot development in the play; it consists of conversations between negative and positive characters. This is the influence contemporary author European comedy, here he goes further than Sumarokov. " French comedy absolutely good... There are great actors in comedy... when you look at them, you, of course, forget that they are playing a comedy, but it seems that you are seeing a straight story,” Fonvizin writes to his sister while traveling around France. But Fonvizin can in no way be called an imitator. His plays are filled with a truly Russian spirit, written in a truly Russian language.

It was from “The Minor” that I. A. Krylov’s fable “Trishkin Kaftan” grew, it was from the speeches of the characters in the play that the aphorisms “mother’s son”, “I don’t want to study, I want to get married”, “fearing the abyss of wisdom” came out...

main idea the play is to show the fruits of bad education or even its absence, and it grows into a frightening picture of wild landowner evil. Contrasting “evil characters” taken from reality, presenting them in a funny way, Fonvizin puts the author’s comments into the mouth goodies, unusually virtuous persons. As if not hoping that the reader himself will figure out who is bad and what is bad, the writer main role allocates to positive heroes.

“The truth is that Starodum, Milon, Pravdin, Sophia are not so much living faces as moralistic dummies; but their actual originals were no more alive than their dramatic photographs... They were walking, but still lifeless, schemes of a new good morality...

Time, intensification and experiments were needed to awaken organic life in these still dead cultural preparations,” historian V. O. Klyuchevsky wrote about the comedy.
Negative characters appear completely alive before the viewer. And this is the main artistic merit of the play, Fonvizin’s luck. Like the positive heroes, the negative ones wear speaking names, and the surname “Skotinin” grows to a full name artistic image. In the very first act, Skotinin is naively surprised by his special love for pigs: “I love pigs, sister; and in our neighborhood there are such large pigs that there is not a single one of them that, standing on its hind legs, would not be taller than each of us by a whole head.” The author's ridicule is all the stronger because it is put into the mouth of the hero at whom we laugh. It turns out that love for pigs is a family trait.

“Prostakov. It’s a strange thing, brother, how family can resemble family! Our Mitrofanushka is just like our uncle - and he is as big a hunter as you are. When I was still three years old, when I saw a pig, I used to tremble with joy. .

Skotinin. This is truly a curiosity! Well, brother, let Mitrofan love pigs because he is my nephew. There is some similarity here: why am I so addicted to pigs?

Prostakov. And there is some similarity here. That’s how I reason.”

The author plays out the same motive in the remarks of other characters. In the fourth act, in response to Skotinin’s words that his family is “great and ancient,” Pravdin ironically remarks: “This way you will convince us that he is older than Adam.” Unsuspecting Skotinin falls into a trap, readily confirming this: “What do you think? At least a few...” and Starodum interrupts him: “That is, your ancestor was created even on the sixth day, but a little earlier than Adam.” Starodum directly refers to the Bible - on the sixth day, God created first animals, then humans. The comparison of caring for pigs with caring for a wife, coming from the same mouth of Skotinin, evokes Milon’s indignant remark: “What a bestial comparison!” Kuteikin, a cunning churchman, invests author's description into the mouth of Mitrofanushka himself, forcing him to read from the Book of Hours: “I am cattle, not man, a reproach to men.” The representatives of the Skotinin family themselves speak with comical simplicity about their “bestial” nature.

“Prostakova. After all, I am the Skotinins’ father. The deceased father married the deceased mother; she was nicknamed Priplodin. They had eighteen of us children...” Skotinin speaks about his sister in the same terms as about his “cute pigs”: “To be honest, there is only one litter; Yes, look how she squealed..." Prostakova herself likens her love for her son to the affection of a dog for her puppies, and says about herself: “I, brother, won’t bark with you,” “Oh, I’m a dog’s daughter! What have I done!". Another special feature of the play “The Minor” is that each of the characters speaks their own language. This was appreciated by Fonvizin’s contemporaries: “everyone differs in their character with their sayings.”

The speech of the retired soldier Tsyfirkin is filled with military terms, the speech of Kuteikin is built on Church Slavonic phrases, the speech of Vralman, a Russian German, obsequious with his masters and arrogant with his servants, is filled with aptly captured features of pronunciation.

The vivid typicality of the play's heroes - Prostakov, Mitrofanushka, Skotinin - goes far beyond its boundaries in time and space. And in A. S. Pushkin in “Eugene Onegin”, and in M. Yu. Lermontov in “Tambov Treasury”, and in M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in “The Tashkent Gentlemen” we find references to them, still alive and carrying within themselves the essence of serf-owners, so talentedly revealed by Fonvizin.

A comedy by D. I. Fonvizin, in which, while maintaining a theatrically conventional plot collision, the everyday life of middle-income landowners, busy with concerns about their own prosperity, was depicted, the artistic content of which consisted in a new display of life on stage, and specifically Russian provincial, landowner life, and a new showing a person with more complex psychological characteristics and in more clarified specific social conditions, had big influence on the subsequent development of the comedy genre.

The artistic method of “Minor” by D. I. Fonvizin is defined as early Russian realism of the Enlightenment era, which is based on existing literary traditions (classical), uses artistic techniques and visual means of previous literary trends, but updates them, subordinating them to his creative task.

Externally, the comedy is based on traditional motif matchmaking and the emerging struggle of suitors for the heroine. It respects all three unities - action, time, place. The action takes place in the village of Prostakova during the day. By the beginning of the events in Prostakova’s house, the fate of the heroes was determined as follows. Sophia and Milon love each other. They know each other from St. Petersburg. Milon's uncle Cheston was favorable towards the love of young people. On business, Milon travels with his team to one of the provinces. During his absence, Sophia's mother dies. A young girl is taken to the village by a distant relative. Here, after some time, the events narrated in the comedy unfold. They constitute the final stage and are completed within a day.

Prostakova decides to marry her poor relative Sophia to her brother, believing that Sophia as a bride is of no interest to her personally. Starodum's letter, from which everyone learns that she is a rich heiress, changes Prostakova's plans. A conflict arises between her and her brother.

The third “seeker” appears - Milo. Prostakova decides to stand her ground and organizes Sophia’s kidnapping. Sophia is saved from a very dramatic end to the matchmaking by the intervention of Milon, who takes his bride away from Prostakova’s “people.” This scene sets up the denouement. Comic heroes shamed, vice punished: the comedy has a moralizing ending. Prostakova was deprived of her rights over the peasants for abusing her power, and her estate was taken under guardianship.

Thus, Skotinin’s matchmaking, receipt of Starodum’s letter, the decision to marry Mitrofan to Sophia, the attempt to kidnap Sophia, Prostakova’s intention to deal with the servants, sort them out “one by one” and find out “who let her out of their hands”, finally, Pravdin’s announcement of the decree on the capture Prostakova's houses and villages under her care are the key, central situations of the comedy.

In connection with the main theme of the comedy, the structure of “The Minor” includes scenes and persons that are not directly related to the development of the plot, but are somehow related to the content of the comedy. Some of them are imbued with true comedy. These are scenes with Mitrofan trying on a new dress and a discussion of Trishka’s work, Mitrofan’s lessons, a quarrel between a sister and brother ending in a “brawl,” a quarrel between teachers, a comic dialogue during Mitrofan’s exam. All of them create an idea of everyday life, Everyday life uncultured landowner family, the level of its demands, intra-family relationships, convince the viewer of the verisimilitude and vitality of what is happening on stage.

Other scenes are in a different style. These are dialogues of positive heroes - Starodum, Pravdin, Milon, Starodum and Sophia, whose content echoes the dialogues of tragic heroes. In them we're talking about about an enlightened monarch, about the appointment of a nobleman, about marriage and family, about the education of young nobles, about “that it is unlawful to oppress one’s own kind through slavery.” These speeches, in essence, represent a presentation of the positive program of D. I. Fonvizin.

The action in the comedy unites all the characters and at the same time divides them into. evil and virtuous. The former seem to be concentrated around Prostakova, the latter - around Starodum. This also applies minor characters: teachers and servants. The nature of the characters' participation in events is not the same. According to the degree of activity among negative characters Prostakova is rightly put in first place, then Skotinin, Mitrofan. Prostakov essentially does not participate in the struggle. Of the positive characters, Sophia is passive. As for the rest, their participation in events manifests itself at the most decisive moments; Starodum announces his “will” to the suitors, predetermining the outcome; saves his bride from Milon's kidnappers with a weapon in his hands; announces a government decree on the guardianship of Pravdin.

It should be noted that, preserving the classic tradition, D. I. Fonvizin gives the heroes of the comedy meaningful names and surnames. This corresponds to the one-line character of the heroes, whose characters have a certain dominant. What is new in the depiction of heroes are the individual biographical factors in the formation of characters (Prostakov and Prostakova) - the presence of bright speech characteristics heroes, reflection in the comedy of the complexity of characters capable of self-development (images of Mitrofan, Prostakova, Eremeevna).

The difference between heroes is not limited to their moral qualities. The introduction of extra-plot scenes into the comedy expanded and deepened its content and determined the presence of other, deeper grounds for contrasting the nobles depicted in it. In accordance with this, the comedy has two endings. One concerns the relationship between Mitrofan, Skotinin, Milon and Sophia, whose fate was determined, on the one hand, by Prostakova, on the other, by Starodum; the second relates to the fate of Prostakova as an evil landowner and a bad mother. In the events of this denouement, social and moral ideals author, the ideological and ethical orientation of comedy as a whole is determined.

P. A. Vyazemsky, From the book “Fonvizin”
In the comedy “The Minor,” the author already had a most important goal: the disastrous fruits of ignorance, bad upbringing and abuses of domestic power were exposed by him with a bold hand and painted with the most hateful colors... In “The Minor” he no longer jokes, does not laugh, but is indignant at the vice and stigmatizes it without mercy: even if it makes the audience laugh with the picture of abuses and tomfoolery brought out, then even then the laughter inspired by it does not distract from deeper and more regrettable impressions...
The ignorance in which Mitrofanushka grew up, and the examples at home should have prepared in him a monster, like his mother, Prostakova... All the scenes in which Prostakova appears are full of life and fidelity, because her character is sustained to the end with unflagging art, with unchanging the truth. A mixture of arrogance and baseness, cowardice and malice, vile inhumanity towards everyone and tenderness, equally vile, towards her son, with all that ignorance, from which, like from a muddy source, all these properties flow, coordinated in her character by a sharp-witted and observant painter.
The success of the comedy “Minor”

was decisive. Its moral action is undeniable. Some of the names characters became common nouns and are still used in popular circulation. There is so much reality in this comedy that provincial legends still name several persons who allegedly served as the author’s originals.
N.V. Gogol, From the article “What, finally, is the essence of Russian poetry and what is its peculiarity”
Fonvizin's comedy amazes the brutal brutality of man, which came from a long, insensitive, unshakable stagnation in the remote corners and backwaters of Russia. She exhibited such a terribly bark of coarseness that you could hardly recognize a Russian person in her. Who can recognize anything Russian in this evil creature, full of tyranny, such as Prostakova, the tormentor of peasants, husband and everything except her son... This insane love for her brainchild is our strong Russian love, which in a person who has lost his dignity, expressed itself in such a perverted form, in such a wonderful combination with tyranny, so that the more she loves her child, the more she hates everything that is not her child. Then Skotinin’s character is a different type of coarseness. His clumsy nature, having not received any strong and violent passions, turned into some kind of calmer, artistic love of its kind for cattle, instead of man: pigs became for him the same as for an art lover Art Gallery. Then Prostakova’s husband - an unfortunate, murdered creature, in whom even those weak forces that were holding on were crushed by his wife’s prodding - a complete dulling of everything! Finally, Mitrofan himself, who, having nothing evil in his nature, having no desire to cause misfortune to anyone, becomes insensitively, with the help of pleasing and self-indulgence, a tyrant of everyone, and most of all of those who love him most, that is, his mother and nannies, so that insulting them had already become a pleasure for him.
V. O. Klyuchevsky, From the article “Minor” by Fonvizin (Experience of historical explanation of an educational play)
...In the comedy there is a group of figures led by Uncle Starodum. They stand out from the comic staff of the play: these are noble and enlightened reasoners, academicians of virtue. They are not so much the characters in the drama as its moral setting: they are placed near the characters in order to sharpen their dark faces with their light contrast... Starodum, Milon, Pravdin, Sophia... appeared as walking, but still lifeless, schemes of the new, good morality that they put on themselves like a mask. Time, effort and experiments were needed to awaken organic life in these still dead cultural preparations...
“The Minor” is a comedy not of faces, but of situations. Her faces are comical, but not funny, comical as roles, but not at all funny as people. They can amuse you when you see them on stage, but they are disturbing and upsetting when you meet them outside the theater, at home or in society.
...Yes, Mrs. Prostakova is a master at interpreting decrees. She wanted to say that the law justifies her lawlessness. She said nonsense, and this nonsense is the whole point of “The Minor”; without it, it would have been a comedy of nonsense... The decree on the freedom of the nobility was given so that the nobleman was free to flog his servants whenever he wanted...
...Mitrofan is a synonym for a stupid ignoramus and his mother’s darling. The underage Fonvizin is a caricature, but not so much a stage caricature as an everyday one: his upbringing disfigured him more than the comedy made him laugh.

“Ideological and artistic originality of Comedy D. Essay on the topic Ideological and artistic originality of Comedy D

Other works on this topic: